Intelligence and the Acquisition of Habits. 161 



tended to throw doubt on the instinctive nature of the 

 bird's procedure. " I have a bullfinch," she says,* " which 

 tt-as hatched last summer after primroses were over. They 



. were, therefore, quite new to him when I offered him the 

 irst I could get this season. He pulled it to pieces quite 

 ndiscriminately, biting stalk, flower, or calyx quite in- 

 lifferently, and the same with a few more which were 

 ?iven to him at the same time. But since then he has 

 )ften had a few at a time, perhaps twenty or thirty in all, 

 ind he now almost always bites out the lower part of the 

 ;alyx as described by Mr. Darwin in Nature. Sometimes 

 le bites a little too high up, but almost instantly tries 

 igain with better success. When that part is eaten, he 

 ittacks the stalk rather than the corolla. 



"Last spring I offered primroses to four bullfinches 

 )elonging to friends. Not one seemed to pull the flower 



pieces according to any method. Two of them I saw 

 >nly once. Another (an old bird, and somewhat shy), after 

 >eing supplied with the flowers for several days, seemed 

 is unskilful in picking out the titbit as he was at first. 



.Che fourth was a young bird. His mistress was called 

 .way before she had heard what was the peculiarity for 



1 7hich I was watching. A few days later she told me she 

 lad given him primroses in the mean time, and had 

 jioticed that he ate only the green part. [This was not 



he case with the first I offered him.] In those few days 

 I e had learnt the art of primrose-eating, not, indeed, 

 uite perfectly, but wonderfully well considering how little 

 ractice he had had. C. A. M." 



It will be seen, then, that it is by no means so easy 

 s might at first sight be supposed, to determine whether 

 n habitual activity is truly instinctive or is due to the 

 lay of individual selective intelligence. 

 * Nature, vol. xiii. p. 427. 



M 



